COS Chapter Eighteen: "Dobby's Reward"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Dumbledore’s beaming at Harry. Yes, Albus, it must be nice to know that Harry now worships you so much that he cares about your reaction more than anyone else’s.

* So how long has Dumbles known that Riddle’s been possessing Ginny? After HBP, I wouldn’t be surprised to know that he’d guessed from the start, but has been sitting on the information to let Harry “try his strength” or whatever.

* “Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was actually called Tom Riddle.” Yes, Dumbles, because you never tell anyone. Which seems somewhat odd, given that the pureblood fanatics who apparently make up his biggest supporters might hesitate at joining a known half-blood. Plus, of course, it’s a lot harder to be scared of Tommy Riddle of Slytherin House than it is of Lord Voldemort, Master of Death.

* On second thoughts, it’s not that odd. After all, the threat of Voldemort provides a useful means of distracting people from the underlying problems facing the Wizarding World, not least of which is the fact that this Machiavellian schoolteacher is controlling everything behind the scenes.

* Seriously, for all his supposed modesty in not accepting the Minister of Magic post, he seems to have acquired a remarkably large amount of influence. He’s already Headmaster of wizarding Britain’s only school, Supreme Warlock of the Wizengamot, Chief Mugwump and head of the International Confederation of Wizards, which in Muggle terms is like being Education Secretary, Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Chancellor and Secretary-General of the UN all at once. More powerful, in fact, since the Education Secretary doesn’t hire and fire individual teachers, or expel individual pupils. No wonder he wants people distracted by Voldemort.

* Someone really ought to write a parody fic with Dumbledore as this sinister villain controlling everything behind the scenes, and the Death Eaters as a group of noble freedom-fighters trying to overthrow him, who have an unfair reputation as a group of dark wizards due to Dumbledore’s control of the press. Or better yet, Voldemort could be an agent working for Dumbledore, giving the WW something to unite against in order to stop them questioning Dumbledore’s authority.

* I wonder if Dumbledore’s being so lenient to Ginny here because he’s remembering how he was once taken in by Grindlewald?

* For some reason, I now find myself always suspecting the worst every time Dumbledore’s eyes start twinkling. I wonder what he could be up to here?

* Note how it’s Ron who immediately thinks of Hermione being OK. Another clue to Hr/R?

* Special Awards for Services to the School and two hundred points? Hardly an appropriate reward, IMHO. Not only is fighting millennium-old monsters not a recognised extra-curricular activity, making it inappropriate to give them points for it, but a glorified school trophy seems a bit inadequate. They should be given Orders of Merlin instead.

* Dumbledore doesn’t seem surprised that Lockhart tried to memory charm Harry and Ron. So does this mean that he knew all along about Gilderoy’s modus operandi? And he still hired him nevertheless? Remind me again, why is it that Dumbledore’s considered the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever had?

* Harry doesn’t think he’s like Tom, because Harry’s in Gryffindor and Tom’s just a Slytherin. Oh dear. Maybe Voldemort’s idea of abolishing Houses was a good one after all.

* Also, note how Harry thinks “doing well in Slytherin” means “evil”. Yet more evidence of the Houses dividing students and encouraging them to think of members of other Houses as being beneath them. Seriously, it’s like the Founders thought that the WW was too boring, and set up a system purposefully designed to lead to as much civil war as possible.

* This would be an excellent opportunity for Dumbledore to say to Harry, “Look, Harry, I know you don’t like some Slytherin students, but Slytherins are people too, Slytherin House is every bit as good as any other House, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being sorted into Slytherin.” Instead, he seems to confirm Harry’s idea that choosing not to be sorted into Slytherin is some sort of moral test he had to pass.

* Getting all psychoanalytical here, I think that maybe Dumbledore knows deep down that he’d have been better-suited to Slytherin than Gryffindor (he’s cunning and manipulative enough, at any rate), and compensates by doing down Slytherin House whenever he can get away with it.

* Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled the sword out of the Hat, apparently. So does that mean that no other House member would be able to receive help from the Hat, or would they have pulled out something equally cool? If, say, Pansy had been taken into the Chamber and Draco had gone down to rescue her, would he have pulled out Slytherin’s crossbow or something?

* I’d like to think that Helga Hufflepuff, at least, would have offered up her weapon (battle-axe, maybe? Mace?) to anyone who needed it, regardless of House.

* So why did the governors want Dumbledore back? When has he done anything to stop the attacks?

* I don’t believe the cursing families part, either. A shrewd political operator like Lucius would never resort to something so obviously illegal. More likely the governors are just trying to cover their backsides in case Dumbledore’s angry with them. You know what he’s like about personal loyalty, after all.

* Come to think of it, does anyone know whether any of the governors went on to mysteriously find themselves in a position where their only option involved doing some humiliating and demeaning job for Dumbledore?

* So Lucius, a man whom even Voldemort described as “slippery”, now virtually goes to pieces the moment his plot’s uncovered. Has JKR been getting the car batteries out again, perhaps?

* If any more of Voldemort’s schoolthings turn up, Mr. Weasley will have them traced back to Lucius. That’s right, one of the main good guys is going to frame his personal enemy based on nothing more than a hunch.

* So “Lucius throws a sock which Dobby happens to catch” is now the same as “Lucius hands Dobby a sock.” Hmm, you’re on shaky legal grounds there, I think.

* Unfortunately, being free doesn’t seem to have changed Dobby’s inherent servility. Even more unfortunately, he’ll be back to inflict it upon us in later books.

* I hope than when Dumbles cancelled all those exams, he just cancelled the internal end-of-year ones, rather than the OWLs and NEWTs. How’re those seventh-years going to get jobs without any qualifications?

* Lucius Malfoy’s been sacked as a school governor. By whom, exactly? Do governors have the power to sack each other?

* Ginny Weasley’s perfectly happy again. She may have recklessly endangered her fellow-students’ safety (why did she write in that diary again? Why?), but none of them actually died, so that’s OK.

* So Percy – who, let us not forget, seems to have cared for Ginny the most out of all the Weasley brothers – has specifically asked her not to tell anyone about his girlfriend, so what does she do? Tell as soon as someone asks. In front of the twins. The best you can say is probably that she’s being extraordinarily naïve; the worst, I suppose, is that she’s maliciously hoping that the twins’ persecution of Percy might amuse her in some way.

* So, to recap, she’s written in this diary even after she suspects it’s possessing her, not told anyone that she’s the one attacking people, and completely betrayed Percy’s confidence. And yet, somehow, I still like this version better than the second one.

* Still, kissing in deserted corridors doesn’t seem particularly IC for the Percy we know. More evidence that he’s not nearly as pompous normally as he is when surrounded by people who constantly try to belittle him?

* And on that bombshell, it’s time to end the read-through. Thanks to everyone who read and commented on it.

 

Comments

Re: Stock in the prophecy

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Terri disagreed (I still think she was joking?); IF Harry was a Horcrux, she said, then:

At that point there IS a unique power to vanquish the Dark Lord that Harry and no one else has. Harry, and no one else, can destroy a Horcrux by committing suicide (or being killed while "trying his strength").

She's saying that only Harry can destroy a horcrux via the method of committing suicide. Anyone else would have to commit murder to kill the Harry-crux. Murder damages the soul. Some might suggest that suicide does, also, and at a point in one's life (the end of it) where the person has no more time in which to allow the soul to heal. In the hypothetical case of Harry being the only horcrux, then, if Harry died accidentally, then no other person has committed deliberate murder and, Harry will not have damaged his own soul at the point of death. So, allowing Harry to "try his strength" could result in a dead Harry-crux without the problem of anyone's soul being damaged since no one had to murder him.

We could get into a debate about whether manslaughter could damage a soul and, if it did, if it would damage it as much as the deliberate murder of a person. I would say it doesn't since there is a clear difference in intent between murder, the deliberate killing of a person, and manslaughter, accidentally causing a person's death.

No one would need to kill a person at all to destroy the other horcruxes, though people do get squeamish about killing a living animal. Killing Nagini is not killing a person. The diary, the cup, the diadem, etc., can be destroyed through magical means. And, none of the other horcruxes are human. The cup can't commit suicide, for instance. Nagini might be able to off herself somehow (hard to do without hands) but the intent to commit suicide needs to be there for her to damage her soul. Now, if Nagini is a magical creature, she may have more responsibility along those lines - magical creatures tend to come off as more sentient (think of Buckbeak) but her intent would still be more diminished than a human's. If she's just a cool snake Voldemort picked up in his travels and not a magical creature, she would be accorded no responsibility at all for killing herself since we could assume that an animal's instinct is for survival so an animal has no conscious intent to go against that instinct.

Re: Stock in the prophecy - part II

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

(continuing because of word limit)

We might also debate whether a magical animal has a soul as we understand it. Some Muggle religions and belief systems believe that animals have souls so of course, under those systems, magical creatures would also have souls. Other Muggle religions and belief systems believe that animals do not have souls. Under those systems it would be difficult to discern if a magical creature would have a soul or not since it is clearly different from other animals yet it is still an animal. An animal can't be tried for murder because of its diminished understanding of murder and its stronger instinct to kill for food or for defense which drives it. So, an animal could potentially not be held responsible for offing itself since it has a limited understanding of why it might kill. So, even though Nagini is a living horcrux, she has no option to commit suicide since that requires heightened responsibility and the understanding that goes along with it. She may be able to off herself but she would have no understanding of the morality or the lack of morality of the act.

We could also debate whether the deliberate destruction of a horcrux constitutes murder since it releases a human soul from its container but I would think that the damaged soul bit would not constitute a full and undamaged soul. It has no ability to regenerate - the soul seems to have no power to re-grow portions of itself, only to heal what has been damaged. A fragment of the soul would not have the central part of it that may be necessary for regeneration. I'm not even sure if the soul bit is alive since it has been torn from its core. The soul bits in Harry and Nagini may still be alive because they have another entity's essence to live off of but, does that mean that a soul bit can be artificially kept alive without any intention of re-connecting it to its core self? I tend toward thinking that horcruxing a piece of soul is more like putting a severed finger on ice without meaning to re-attach it. It's still alive but it has no function and no chance of regaining its function since its only purpose now is to ensure the immortality of the body that ejected it.

Re: Stock in the prophecy - part II

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

We could also debate whether the deliberate destruction of a horcrux constitutes murder since it releases a human soul from its container but I would think that the damaged soul bit would not constitute a full and undamaged soul.

In settings such as this where there's a distinction between the mind and soul, I'd personally define murder as ending the life of/destroying something containing a sapient being's mind rather than a soul. But regardless of that sort of metaphysical question, destroying a Horcrux while its owner is still incarnate looks more like destroying someone's life support while they're not using it.